On Friday 27 February, Big Think partner PwC hosted its second global webcast focused on the question, ‘What would you do if you were not afraid?’ The webcast was part of ‘Aspire to Lead: The PwC Women’s...

That seems different from how sciences like physics handle new evidence. The documentary Particle Fever about discovering the Higgs particle shows physicists are ready to dump decades of ideas and work because of new data. The key is what’s considered sacred?

Science's pre-commitments are to rigorous processes, not to particular inputs or outputs. Its experts readily defer to reality as referee. But experts in economics can be “ideologically” pre-committed to sacred assumptions (or results), dominated by “identity protective cognition,” and driven to defend tribal positions.

One aspect of Tyler Cowen’s intertribal Piketty review illustrates. He calls Piketty’s redistributive recommendations “more ideological than analytic,” then complains about “distorting effects” of “intense government control,” asserting that growing the “economy would do more than wealth redistribution to combat...inequality.” But recent IMF research finds “no observed tradeoff between redistributive...institutions and...growth.” Instead “inequality reduces growth”. Are Cowen’s ideological priors encouraging him to discount contrary evidence?

Are disputes in economics doomed to be less decidable, by nature? Some lessons:

2. Constellation errors: Many plausible pictures can be drawn between economic datapoints.

3. Analytical asymmetries: Flaws are like foreheads—those of others are easier to see. So grant greater weight to the scrutiny of opponents (e.g. Cowen is more reliable critiquing Piketty than in promoting his own views).